Daniel Clark (Louisiana politician)

Daniel Clark (circa 1766 – August 13, 1813) was the first Delegate from the Territory of Orleans to the United States House of Representatives. Born in Sligo, Ireland, he was reportedly educated at Eton College in England.

Clark emigrated to the United States in the early 1780s, living with family members in Germantown, Pennsylvania. In 1786, at the invitation of his merchant uncle, Daniel J. Clark, Sr. of Clarksville, Mississippi, he moved to New Orleans in Spanish Louisiana. The younger Clark streaked into the New Orleans economy, conducting at least 64 notarized transactions, mostly the sale of slaves, that year - double the number of transactions ever conducted in New Orleans in a single year before then. However, Clark's only appearance in the 1790s as a major businessman was reflected in his numerous formal protests for debts due him in 1793.

Although he was a Spanish citizen until the late 1790s, Clark worked assiduously in the interests of the U.S. government, providing first-hand, detailed responses to President Thomas Jefferson's questions on Louisiana. Concerned about possible renegade French attempts to hold New Orleans despite the Louisiana Purchase, Clark sent vital military intelligence to Mississippi territorial governor Claiborne and American general Wilkinson, and offered to seize the city for American authorities. On the day of Louisiana's annexation, according to a news account, Clark was "everywhere and had an eye to everything."

Clark engaged in land speculation, planting, ship-owning, and banking, but delegated most of the day-to-day business of the firm to the prominent merchants Chew & Relf, who usually worked with him as partners. He was appointed a member of the first Legislative Council for the Territory of Orleans, but declined. Clark was elected as the territorial representative to the U.S. House of Representatives and served from December 1, 1806, to March 3, 1809. Clark may have believed Jefferson should have appointed him as territorial governor, rather than William Charles Cole Claiborne, then governor of the Mississippi Territory. However, although Clark may have been popular with some of the Spanish elite, the prominent New Orleans merchant Benjamin Morgan cautioned about Clark: "...he is not popular" and "deficient in dignity of character and sterling veracity...liked by few of the Americans here.",

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